A poem, from the late Chuck Trafelet of Traverse City, Michigan:
.
.
.
Those who would know the truth
Must be prepared to accept
It for what it is; for once it
Is known there can be no
Turning back, no denying
Its existence, and not always
Can you exchange what is
For what you wish it to be
Came across this selection from In Memoriam A.H.H., by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Terrific stuff – if you’ve never read the entire poem – it’s worth it. It was a favorite of Queen Victoria, and considered by many among the greatest poems of the 19th century. Guess it’s poetry week around here.
From Wikipedia:
It is a requiem for the poet’s Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. Because it was written over a period of 17 years, its meditation on the search for hope after great loss touches upon many of the most important and deeply-felt concerns of Victorian society. It contains some of Tennyson’s most accomplished lyrical work, and is an unusually sustained exercise in lyric verse. It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century.
From In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubble to the void,
When God has made the pile complete.
Behold, we know not anything,
I can but trust that good shall fall.
At last –far off– at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring
The wish, that of the living whole,
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have,
The likest God within the soul?
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope
And gather dust and chaff, and call,
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
I came across this poem shortly after our move to Washington, DC. It was written by Pub Theology’s favorite poet, Chuck Trafelet, whose self-published collection of poetry was discovered in our previous home in Traverse City, MI. Fitting for us at a number of levels, including (or especially) the title. Picture me reading this in a house full of boxes on a cold November evening in an unfamiliar city where we’ve just uprooted the entire family, wondering what in the world we’ve done.
It was timely.
roots
as evening once again steals across the land
and midwinter cold settles in the bones
here so far from home and friends
beginning a new life – ending the old
bones, why do you pain me so
you know as well as I and better
we cannot turn back now
look to tomorrow bones
look to tomorrow
quiet now, for we can do as well here
and better in time
leave me rest, do not press me so
yesterday is gone
and today fades in the night
look to tomorrow, bones
look to tomorrow